


The Aftermath

by CVSTELLAN



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Apocalypse, F/F, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Post-War, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25807213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CVSTELLAN/pseuds/CVSTELLAN
Summary: A girl stands with a war-ravaged, unforgiving planet in one hand and her deepest fears in the other. At the end of everything, she must make a choice - save the world, or save herself?





	1. Chapter One

I wake up to screams. I scramble to my feet, grasping for my glasses on the way up. I fumble around in the darkness for my torch, for my bat, for something because holy shit somebody must be in trouble-  
My fingers shove the torch on and I sweep it across the room, my glasses crushed in my other hand. I impatiently put them on and survey the scene in front of me. My blanket is in a crumpled heap by the door, my bat somehow found its way underneath the radiator and I’ve ended up sprawled in a corner, my back against the joint where the walls meet.  
“Stupid, stupid, stupid...” I mumble to myself, grabbing all my things and bringing them to the centre of the room where my small camping mat sits askew. I straighten it up and sit on it, wrapping my blanket around me as securely as possible.  
I thought they had stopped. The nightmares. Hell, I definitely thought I was past the point of waking myself up with my own screams. I shake my head, trying to get the taste of blood out of my mouth. I must’ve bitten my tongue at some point in my haste to get up, as I feel a dull throb on the right side of it. I shudder, remembering stories people would tell in the playground to each other about swallowing our own tongues. A siren sounds outside and I prepare myself for the incoming rush of noise as best as I can, pulling the blanket around my head.  
The impact still floors me, and I end up shivering in the corner again. I don’t know who dropped the bomb – good or bad, military or rebels, friend or foe – but in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter as long as they don’t know I’m here. It wouldn’t matter who found me here, I’d still end up with a bullet in my brain. I approach my rucksack and unpack my deck of cards, shuffling them aimlessly in my hands.  
“Was... this your card?” I ask the room, revealing a queen from the deck. Predictably, I get no answer. I flop down, half on the mat and half on the grimy floor, throwing the cards off in the direction of the window. I can’t keep going on like this. Finding scraps of food where I can, sleeping with one eye open, travelling from house to house under the cover of the night, praying I don’t get spotted by a patrol. I’ve had to start talking to myself just to make sure I know what my own voice sounds like, and I have no way of checking what I look like. I’d imagine I look dirtier than the pristine 16 year old I remember, with her bleach blonde pixie cut and ever present sneer. It’s certainly been a while since my hair grew out. I pull a strand of it to eye level, inspecting it. It’s slimy, almost grease-like. I drop it in disgust and sit up, gathering the cards up and putting them back. My stomach growls and I shut my eyes for a moment, my hands digging into the floor.  
“Okay.... food.” I say, rolling the camper mat up and into a tight ball. I take a last, forlorn glance around the room and am surprised to see that I’m blinking back tears. I don’t cry anymore. Back when the world ended, I used to cry a lot. Then as time went on and more and more people around me left or died or turned their backs on me, I stopped. Mostly to protect myself – I wouldn’t have survived this long already if every time something tragic happened I had to sit and sob about it – but also because there was no point. There still isn’t one, really, but here I am, almost crying over a room I’ve slept in for three days.  
Anger takes over as I harshly wipe my tears away with my thumb. There’s no point in crying – I shouldn’t be doing it. I have a mental list of things I shouldn’t do, I always have. It was more mundane before all this. Don’t do drugs, wear protection, don’t hook up with random people you find when you’re huddling outside the bar, lighting cigarettes with your friends and feeling too afraid to show your fake ID to the bouncer... You know, regular stuff.  
I don’t like to dwell on the past. It makes the world around me seem too dark, too crazy for me to survive in. Yet I feel my mind wandering to my old lunch table. It’s stupid, mourning a table when I could be thinking of my family or friends or my pet cat Doris but at the time, that table was a huge deal. My old best friend Dawn and I managed to snag it for our social group and it earned us a day of adoration and praise from the others, before they went back to talking shit about everyone else and practically ignoring us. Well, ignoring Gwen really. She used to joke that nobody could ever ignore me, and I always agreed with her. She’d say it was because I was so pretty, and I would agree again. She would look at me expectantly then, as if she was waiting for me to say something about her looks, and I always looked away or changed the subject.  
It wasn’t because she was ugly, it’s just I didn’t know what to compliment her on. Her frazzled, too-dark ginger hair? Her eyes that were slightly too far apart and always betrayed exactly how she was feeling? The fact that she wore Hello Kitty badges and jewellery to be ironic but always just ended up looking like a sad, lost kindergartener? When I say it like that, she sounds ugly. She sounds unbearable, and sometimes she was. Like when she would finish our Chinese takeaways at lunch without even thinking about her weight. Or when she hung out with the geeks and the weirdos in drama and she would come back to the table smelling of old books and ignoring the glares from the others. But other times, when we were away from all the others, in our bedrooms, laughing over dumb stories and spilling our hearts to each other, she was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. In those moments, her hair framed her face just right, her eyes would be scrunched shut and she would hold her necklace while she laughed at whatever I’d said or we’d seen. I’d always think about what she looked like in those moments whenever she finished complimenting me, and a few times I almost told her how pretty she was, how gorgeous I found her... But I never did. Those moments were spread too thin, too fleeting for me to appreciate her properly.  
I sigh and look around the room again. It’s peeling wallpaper, torn up carpet and tiny window have served me well, but it’s time to hit the road again. I dig out my necklace from underneath my t-shirt and kiss it before tucking it away again, closing my eyes for a moment. I leave the room, shutting the door behind me so I leave no trace of myself anywhere. Anywhere at all.


	2. Chapter Two

I duck behind a destroyed car, breathing as thinly as I can. I’ve searched a few streets now – breaking into houses, checking and double-checking meticulously to make sure I haven’t missed anything. The best thing I’ve come out with so far is one and a half cans of spaghetti hoops. I had to pry the half can from a cold, dead hand, all without looking at the face attached to it. I used to look into their eyes as I did it, but soon enough the desolate landscape ended up in my nightmares, no matter how respectful I tried to be or if I put a blanket over them to try and honour them. It’s one of my rules now. I decided it was less cruel to look away, to be a coward, to be a lowly thief rather than a strong survivor. There’s a shuffle from the opposite end of the street and I freeze, flattening myself against the side of the vehicle. Minutes pass but the feeling in my stomach doesn’t leave, and I’ve learned to trust my gut. Sure enough, a few minutes later, I hear a voice call out.  
“Got one, boys!”  
A collective laugh begins and shadows are cast across the road, all heading to where I first heard noise. I ready myself and as efficiently as possible, manoeuvre myself to the back end of the car. I peek my head around the side and I have a relatively clear view of what’s going on – and I immediately wish I didn’t. A kid lies on the ground, a boot on his head. To his credit, he’s still moving, which is more than I’ve learned to expect from people who are amateur enough to get caught. At first glance, I think the boot belongs to a soldier, tall and grinning. But I look closer and see a ring of black around his eyes, and scars on either side of his mouth. Shit.   
I whip my head back around and re-think. Soldiers are easy enough to outrun. They still have orders, bosses, a chain of command to report to when they kill people like me. Rebels face harsher consequences for killing people, because their numbers are constantly running low and they need recruits. But Smilers... They’re a whole different kettle of fish. They started appearing just before everything first went to shit. Some people said they were hospital patients, some said they were a cult, others thought they were just a hoax. The reality of the Smilers is that nobody really knows who they were before they turned, or who they are now, except they torture people and disfigure them before recruiting them or sending them out into the world. Almost everyone chooses to stay, driven to insanity by their captors. The horror stories the others would tell of them were scarring... And now I’m faced with a group of them.   
As I’m thinking of what to do, I hear a gunshot. I can’t resist looking backwards to where the kid was pinned down, and to my surprise, it’s not the kid that’s dead. Not at the moment anyway. Instead, the Smiler sure isn’t smiling anymore – he’s lying on the ground, still. Finally silent. What isn’t silent, however, is the cocking of a gun directly behind me. I freeze as a voice whispers to me;  
“Stand up, sweetheart. Make it quick.”  
Reluctantly, I drag myself up. If I’ve learned anything from hiding in the shadows, watching people kill one another, it’s that being cocky gets you shot faster, and I don’t really want to die on an empty stomach. My mind races and I put my hands in the air in an attempt to catch the attention of the boy from the other side of the street. I can’t risk looking over to see if my plan worked – not when there’s a Smiler pointing a gun at my chest. The Smiler grins – shocker – and I keep my face level, a blank page. You can’t let them intimidate you, or you’re digging your own grave. I study his face though, as casually as I can. He doesn’t seem all that sure of what to do next, and I’m not all that surprised. They’re not known for taking prisoners. It’s then I hear movement behind me, and I manage to stop myself from reacting. Fortunately, the Smiler is just staring at me, seemingly unaware of the noise. Unfortunately, that means he’s still looking at me, with his weird eyes and mutilated face.   
Another noise interrupts our staring contest and this time, the Smiler takes his eyes off of me – and I strike. I move toward him, ducking at the last second and putting all my weight into my shoulders as I run into his legs. He falls over, a bullet ricocheting off of a nearby car as the gun clatters to the ground. He shoves me backwards and I feel a sharp pain in my head as I clatter into a car window, my neck bending all the way back.  
I hear a gunshot echo throughout the street and a yell before silence. Then, gravel crunching, coming closer and stopping in front of me. I try to pull my head up, but my vision is clouded and sleep threatens to take me as I moan in despair.   
“Please... Gwen...”  
A voice says – me? Is that my voice? But it doesn’t matter now, nothing does. I see her, standing, waiting for me. She says she’s waited too long and I have to hurry before Dawn and the others get mad at us. I struggle to make sense of anything she’s saying.   
“Dawn? But why... Where are you?”   
A voice comes through Gwen’s mouth that I’ve never heard before – rough and low, not like hers at all.  
“Should we bring her?”  
Another voice from Dawn’s mouth this time – when did Dawn get here?  
“Connor! We have to, she’s going to... We can’t just leave her here.”  
The foreign voices fade as Gwen’s regular voice cuts through them, dulling them. She outstretches her hand, smiling at me like she always did as Dawn fades away, scowling. But I don’t care because I have my Gwen. All to myself.


End file.
